A Special History of Afterschool Specials

Why did ABC launch its Afterschool Specials programming? What were the hot topics in Afterschool Specials (and how did Degrassi do it better)? Join Cristen and Caroline to learn more about how Afterschool Specials addressed race, sexuality and gender.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and we are

(00:22):
talking about after school specials today because you know what,
it's school time and for some of you it might
be after school. And I really, personally, I just wanted
to know about after school specials because in my brain
they are these kitchen feel good lesson teaching imparting little

(00:47):
videos that we watched now from time to time and say, oh,
look at Scott bo he's too drunk. I don't know
that all of them are feel good videos though, well yeah,
I mean, like Scott Bayo in The Boy who Drank
Too Much was you know, it was pretty it was
pretty tough to watch because he did get too drunk.

(01:09):
Or there was the one what was the name of
the one where he like got all whacked out on
drugs and fell in the water or something. I think
you are referring to stoned when Scott Bayo smokes pot
at school and gets really stoned. Not to be confused though,
with high school narc which is not Scott's Star Scott Bayo,

(01:30):
but it does deal with marijuana in school. Yeah, Scott
bay A lot of people got their start from these things.
Christie McNichol, Rob Low and his jaw, Helen Hunt. There's
one very famous after school special. I don't know the
title of it, but it involves Helen Hunt trying Angel
dust a k A pc P and then jumping through

(01:52):
a window. Cautionary tail these So, before this turns into
me just for sending to to be YouTube, just recounting
clips of after school specials. Uh. We are talking specifically
about ABC after school specials, although CBS also had their
form of after school specials. HBO even did similar kinds

(02:14):
of after school specials, but they ran on ABC from
nineteen seventy two to nine. It was the first network
to do this, and the very first after school special
was actually a Hannah Barbera animated feature about fictional birds. Yeah.
It's called Last of the Curlews and it was about conservation.

(02:34):
It kind of reminded me of Dr Seus's The Lorax. Uh. Yeah,
it was. It was all about these birds called the Curlews,
and it won an Emmy in nineteen seventy three for
Outstanding Achievement in Children's Programming. My father would just say
it was a liberal agenda movie. It was a liberal
leg because it taught kids empathy and they learned about

(02:55):
ecology and environmental problems. I mean, he's a man who
can't sit through Wally and these yeah, uh yeah after
school specials, even though we might snicker at them now
a little bit because they might seem a little bit cheesy,
perhaps through our are now nine o two on oh
jaded lens, they would go on over their lifespan to
Garner eighteen Daytime, any Emmy's, three Blue Ribbons at the

(03:19):
American Film Festival, and a Peabody Award. So you would
think that, you know, having won all these awards, that
they would have been they must have been really popular
from the get go. But according to producer Martin Tay's,
who did a lot of these episodes, most of the episodes,
advertisers were not excited about these these shows. They did
kind of touch on a lot of racy topics and

(03:40):
they were very They were a radical departure from a
lot of the TV shows that were on at the time,
But critics loved them. They loved the series, and they
actually pressured ABC affiliates to take it more seriously. Well, yeah,
because this was the first time that a network devoted
that kind of prime time specifically to teenagers. Because if

(04:01):
we look at TV when this is going on, remember
they were launched in nineteen seventy two, we had Happy
Days comes on air in seventy four, nineteen, Mr Rogers
sixty nine, Sesame Street comes around seventy three, We've got
Schoolhouse Rock, and then because it's awesome, we must mention
it reading Rainbow, Hello, you should do an episode just

(04:24):
on reading. But but those were all targeted toward younger audiences.
So the after school specials were really an attempt to
to educate how this it's adedutainment, uh toward teens, and
so they did tackle those tough topics like teen and
adult alcoholism, homosexuality, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, domestic violence, STDs,

(04:51):
teen suicide, child molestation, um also divorce, such as one
of my favorite after school specials, My dad lives in
a downtown hotel, which happens when boau Bridges and his
wife get divorced and Billy, their child, has to go
visit bou Bridges in a downtown hotel. Huh, yes, well um.

(05:13):
In an episode of NPRS on the Media which aired
in June two thousand five, they took a look at
these these wonderful episodes of learning and they quoted Chicago
Tribune media writer Maureen Ryan, who said that it just
seemed like there was much more of an air of
exploration in terms of topics that might now today be
considered inappropriate for kids or young adults. Yeah. I feel
like parents are very sensitive about what their kids watch.

(05:35):
But these were these were these were learning tools and uh.
They point out that while these after school specials may
have been melodramatic, they acknowledged that there was more to
adolescents than stock hops of happy days. Yeah. These were
happening in an interesting time because there's sort of sandwiched

(05:56):
between on the one side, this moral panic about uh,
television becoming more sexualized and violent. There were all of
these um stories in like Time magazine and Newsweek talking
about connections between violence on television and rising rates of
teenage violence. UM, and also concerns fueled by the Cold

(06:18):
War about whether or not kids were being adequately educated
this new and younger generation. But then on the other side,
you do have the opening up of uh. You know,
it's the swing in seventies, So you have the publication
in nineteen seventy of UH, everything you always wanted to
know about sex, but We're too afraid to ask. Two

(06:39):
years later, the Joy of Sex comes out nineteen seventy three,
Our Bodies Ourselves. You have drug culture going on. Um.
So you have sandwiched in the middle of this these
after school specials that we're trying to appease the moral panic,
the need for a desire for education on the boob
tube that's coming down from from parents, and also addressing

(07:03):
these very real issues that teams are confronting. Yeah, and
this is referred to as the turn to relevance for
TV because you have commercial TV that people are all
up in arms about. It's all sexy times and violence,
but it's becoming more socially conscious to sort of become
an educational tool for young people. And this is all
talked about in a study from Julie Allman talking about

(07:27):
how adolescence was sort of redefined during this time as
just a period in your life to all of a sudden,
now it's something to overcome. It's a disability. You have
to get over well. And you also have to take
into account the changing family dynamics that we're going on
as well, with more mothers working outside the home. So
you have all these latchkey kids. All of a sudden,

(07:47):
you've got divorce on the rise. And again because of
the lack of supervision, perhaps from both parents working. Uh,
you have youth TV intake becoming less supervised. So know
you mentioned producer Martin Toss. Uh. He decided with these
after school specials that he would draw from popular adolescent

(08:10):
literature and keep tabs on publishers weekly to essentially see
what the kids were reading, and in format the shows
similarly or even directly from these young adult novels. For instance, Uh,
Francine Pascal, who wrote the Sweet Valley High series, Um,
she had a novel, The hand Me Down Kid, turned

(08:30):
into an after school special in nineteen three, and it's
all about how a younger sibling is stick of getting
hand me down, so she steals her sister's bike, but
then of course that bike gets stolen lesson learned about stealing. Well,
then what happened? Uh, Well, and then I guess she's
fine with taking hand me downs. I have a feeling
at the end she gets a new outfit, because generally

(08:53):
there is some kind of need that's satisfied, you know,
the kid feels okay and well, a lot of one
of the points that they bring up about this whole
series is that there aren't miracles in these shows. That
oftentimes when these horrible things happen, whether it's oh my god,
I don't get a new outfit or whoops, I got
my girlfriend pregnant, often these are things that the kids
themselves have to deal with and resolve, and and they

(09:16):
don't just like magically, you know, like an episode in
Full House just magically get resolved in thirty minutes, right.
They have to undergo some tough circumstances in order to
reach the other side. And a lot of it is about, yeah,
the kind of the pluckiness of youth and having to
overcome peer pressure or just general loneliness and angst. Although Elman,

(09:43):
whose thesis we've cited, did take issue with how gender
shakes out a lot of times in the after school
specials um she points out that topics are often focused
around male protagonists to begin with, because of the notion
that girls are gonna watch some thing about boys, but
not vice versa, And a lot of times if a

(10:05):
female protagonist does have a problem, it usually required a
male love interest to come along who probably had already
dealt with a similar kind of issue, to guide her
to the solution. Whereas when the tables were turned and
you have a boy who's trying to overcome something the
women or the women, it's the girls who are still

(10:25):
kind of relegated to the side just to be caretakers
but not necessarily catalysts for change. Yeah. A lot of
her study does touch on divisions of gender and able
bodied nous and what that means as far as heteronormativity
and traditional masculinity and femininity. Yeah. She essentially uh makes

(10:47):
the point that able bodied nous is used as a
kind of uh symbol for heteronormativity because you have this
arc of uh you know, you start out with some
kind of handicap and a lack of love interest, and
as someone will overcome some kind of uh disability, then

(11:11):
the love interests will come along, so you have them
able bodied and hooked up by the end, sort of
linking those two things together. Yeah, she calls this a
rehabilitative approach in representing teen problems and addressing teen viewers,
and really, like I mentioned earlier, talks about overcoming disability
and defines um adolescence as what you're you're not being

(11:36):
able bodied, you might even kind of have a disability,
and so this whole thing becomes a developmental stage defined
by exposure to and weathering of the dysfunction. And speaking
of heteronormativity, uh, sexuality was something that did come up
and a number of after school specials, and there were
some that that dealt specifically with teens um coming out.

(11:58):
But a Reese overt Auto of straddle dot Com talks
about the HBO slash Canadian Cable Company special The Truth
about Alex, which is it's not an ABC after school special,
but it's in the same vein of these after school
specials and again starring Scott Bayo. I love that this
episode could just be co titled scottyes uh. And she writes,

(12:24):
for many young homosexuals, the Truth About Alex was the
first time they saw themselves on screen, and that was
profound enough and positive, But the real lesson of the
film hides behind the ostensibly decent portrayal, because outside of
those things, the survival of coming out of the closet
and an eventual acceptance from a handful of family and friends.
The life of a gay person was seen as a

(12:45):
relentless and destructive battle against the world. If you come out,
be prepared for everything to unravel around you. So it
is sort of, um, it's a positive, but still with
these negative attractors of saying, hey, be brave, young person
and be who you are, but still be ready for
a lifetime of hill exactly. She goes on to site

(13:08):
some episodes that focused particularly on young gay people in
high school. There's seven CBS school Break special what If
I'm Gay? Where Friends this guy's friends find his gay
porn collection. It ended up being nominated for three Daytime
Emmy's and actually one one um in there was another
CBS episode called Other Mothers and Meredith Baxter was one

(13:30):
of the mothers and she ended up coming out years later.
That was recently, right, it was just like two years
ago or something. Other Mothers was in when she came out.
Uh that yeah, I want to say it was two
thousand three. Uh. And then there was an HBO episode
called More Than Friends, the coming out of Heidi Lighter.
I think that's how it's pronounced. But yeah, so there

(13:53):
was a focus on gay and lesbian students, but like
Kristen said, there was still the downside of you have
a lot of junk to deal with. Well, it was
similar to to how sex was dealt with, especially when
it comes to st d s and unintended pregnancies. Because
this is going back to Elman's paper and television and

(14:14):
new media. She talks about how while yeah, sexteen sex
was depicted a lot, but STDs were always um depicted
as some kind of punishment, a moral punishment for promiscuity,
as was accidental pregnancy. A lot of time saying like hey,
well you know you can do this, but if you aren't,

(14:38):
you know, monogamous, you're going to get a horrible STD
and terrible things will rain down upon you. Yeah. This
is part of what she called medicalized entertainment, which was
a style of literary slash televisual narratives that emerged around
this time to basically transmit images of medical knowledge and
often disability for public consumption. So here, you've got this

(15:01):
this health issue. Um, let's let's teach you about it
in kind of an entertaining way, so that you'll know
more about it and hopefully avoid it. Yeah. I mean,
I will say, like, um, considering the time that these
were on the air, and considering how how new it
was and how revolutionary was that this was the first

(15:21):
time that the teen experience was really being valued and
portrayed on television, I think that you have to to
take after school specials as I don't know. I I
think that they were a good thing because they did
portray all of these different issues, even though they might
seem kind of kitchen now. Um, not the issues themselves,
but how they um came across, and it would be

(15:44):
interesting to see like if obviously after school specials don't
really exist today in the same format, but how we
might deal with them differently. But I guess maybe we don't.
We don't need after school specials anymore because a lot
of these issues have been mainstreamed into prime time dramas
or drama tase comedies like Glee. You have things like

(16:04):
nine O two and No Going Back in Time a
Little Bit, which came out first in October of nineteen nine.
You have the O C. Dawson's Creek all this other
stuff where they interweave these kinds of uh issues into
incredibly dramatic plotlines. Dawson's Creek, you learned that the brunette
is always the one that you trust. You don't ever
trust the new blonde who comes to town. And I

(16:26):
also think a really good thing about these episodes, Like
christ And said, even though they're a little cheesy, um,
they do feature a lot of different kinds of people,
a lot of different young people of different ethnic backgrounds, ages,
family situations. And Elman says that this whole imagined coming
of age as a process of developing liberal individualism by

(16:49):
offering lessons in tolerance, so showing different types of people
and what they go through instead of just maybe your
run of the mill happy days cast. Yeah. And I
think one of the great things too about after school
specials um as opposed to, or in comparison to the
kinds of teen dramas that we see on TV today,
is that, especially when it comes to their economic backgrounds,

(17:12):
it was a lot of lower middle class, you know,
everyday kids just going through life, whereas a lot of
times now what we see you turn on Gossip Girl
and it's all, you know, fabulously wealthy kids. Even the
poorest among them is clearly obviously incredibly wealthy um, and
so a lot of it's more like stylized, and even

(17:35):
the middle class is portrayed to be like far above
the actual living standards of the current middle class. Yeah. Well,
one thing that definitely was not stylized at all is
a show that I watched in my eighth grade. I
guess it was maybe our break period or something, and
that's Degressy Junior High. Yeah, if there were, I mean,

(17:58):
I gotta say that I in home school, I did
not watch The Grassy. I've heard about Degrassi for a while.
Last year, in fact, a friend of mine who really
has a love for uh eighties and nineties culture, asked
me about it and I was like, yeah, I've just
never seen it, and she's like, you gotta watch the Grassy.

(18:19):
Did you which version did you watch? Because there's like
fifty I started from the beginning of the Grassy Junior
High and Caroline, I didn't leave my room for a
few days because I got their I got hooked. I
was twenty six years old on a Degrassy Junior High marathon. Yeah,
well they are. I just remember thinking when I was
watching them in classic this is is stupid, right, guys,

(18:40):
this is so wow. I can't believe they're actually talking
about this. Yeah, they hit all of the kinds of
issues that after school specials did, but it was somehow better,
I feel like, because they just pulled in actual kids
from the neighborhood, Like the clothes that they wear were
closed from their closet. And the Grassy and Your High
and a Grassy High ran on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

(19:04):
CBC from seven to and then there's Degrassive the next generation,
not to be confused with Star Trek correct that started
in two thousand one. But you found some, uh, some
differences as to specifically because it was broadcast in Canada,
about why they could tackle some of the issues that

(19:25):
they did more freely. Yeah, well, I guess I never
thought about the differences between Canada and the US as
far as like cultural taboos and things like that, because
I just don't think of our countries as that different.
Maybe social input, maybe they are, um, but yeah. Linda Schuler,
who's the producer, said that Degrassi needed to be more
entertaining than an after school special because it was all

(19:46):
about finding the authenticity of these characters. Voices and emotions
about really tackling issues that kids were talking about, and
that came into play when they had an episode about abortion.
Because there wasn't really an issue in Canada about airing
this episode. It was like, Okay, well, this is something
that kids are worried about, this is something that happens

(20:08):
in society, let's talk about it. But it was actually
pulled in the US because the network, the N I
don't recall this network or anything, but the n actually
refused to air the abortion episode, and so The New
York Times ended up writing a piece on it like, oh,
Degrassis tackling society's last taboo. And Schuler's response to that

(20:31):
was basically like, well, it's not really our last taboo. Um,
it's just a different national context. And so there's this
book called Programming Reality Perspectives on English and Canadian Television
that said the Degrassi went places that American TV was
afraid to go, and that that national context really does
affect what type of stories can be told on TV. Yeah.

(20:52):
I mean, I gotta say if it if it's a
contest between ABC School Specials versus Degrassi, I mean, hands down,
its Degrassi anyone who out there is not watching this
might get me on another Degrassi kick. I'm saying, you've
got to go home right now and watch it. Yeah. Um, well,
there's also the issues we haven't really talked about girls

(21:12):
and feminism and how that's presented on these shows. Kristen
Pike inn for an essay in Girlhood Studies, which is
a journal. She did an analysis of episodes featuring tomboys
and explored how these after school special circulated ideas of
feminism and femininity to young viewers. And her study demonstrates

(21:33):
how these after school specials targeted girls through images of
female progress and independence while simultaneously cautioning them about the
dangers of women's lib So it's the same kind of
thing that we talked about when they featured gay students
on these episodes. It's like, okay, yeah, go be yourself,
go beat go be a strong woman, a strong young woman.

(21:55):
But but you're you're kind of a tomboy and you're
different and there could be cons equenses. Be prepared. And
they said, she said that, uh, the series trend of
taming tomboys. So like, oh, you're a tomboy, but now
you found a love interest to everything is Better? Um,
it's actually connected to the backlash against women and gay
rights movements. So did this help TV hurt? TV element

(22:20):
in her studies said that it rehabilitated TV's image that
now kids have something productive to watch, more constructive. Um,
you know, maybe portraying sexual issues as productive. Sure. But
at the same time, though, I feel like there was
somewhat of a drop off because you transition from after

(22:42):
school specials really into not to I know, is the
is the biggest thing to pick up from that? Um?
So I don't know. I'm curious to hear what other
people who might have watched more after school specials at
the time when they were airing, and parents a day
who are concerned about TV programming what they think about it.

(23:06):
And I don't know, maybe or maybe if it's if
it's a moot point that we shouldn't be so concerned about,
like what kind of education kids are receiving from television
rather than you know, education that they are receiving from
school and books and other outlets like podcasts. Um, but
I think that. But I'm glad that we took this
look inside of after school specials, inside of Scott Baio's career. Yes,

(23:31):
because I really I didn't know where they came from.
So so that's where then they're not from the Stork.
They are from the brains of ABC and producer Martin Toss.
So there we go. And I think you know, folks
out there, if you would like an episode completely devoted
to Degrassi, I wouldn't be remiss, but I would have

(23:52):
to go back and do a lot of homework. Yeah,
but let's maybe just go watch let us know if
you want that, though we could do it, I really
just want an excuse watch more Degrassi because I still
haven't see the next generation. I digress. So any after
school special letters you got to send our way Mom
Stuff at Discovery dot Com is where you can send them. Now,

(24:13):
before we get into listener letters, I do have a
quick message for you from Netflix, which is partially responsible
for bringing you this episode of stuff Mom Never told You.
And it is the perfect time to talk about Netflix
because we are talking about after school specials. We've ticked
off a number of our favorites and if you would,

(24:37):
for instance, like to take a trip back in TV
time and watch some of the ABC after school specials,
you can watch on Netflix, for instance, the one to
nine eighty two after School Specials Edition, which features a
young Rob Low in the after school special A matter

(24:58):
of time. Now, if you want to find out a
matter of time for what and what young Roblow is
doing in that after school special, all you need to
do is go to Netflix dot com because as a
new Netflix member and a stuff mom never told you listener,
you can get a free thirty day trial membership. Just

(25:18):
go to Netflix dot com slash mom and sign up
and be sure to use that U r L so
they know that Caroline and I sent you. Now, this
free thirty day trial is not going to be around forever,
so do not delay. Head on over to Netflix dot
com flash mom for that free thirty day trial membership.

(25:43):
Now back to our listener letters. We've got to let
her here from Bree talking about our episode on self harm,
and she says she's been a self harming op and
on for about ten years. UM, and talked about the
addiction factor. UM, and I just wanted to read a
couple of things in her her letter because we don't

(26:05):
have time to read the entire thing. Um. She says,
I do agree that the subject is not often talked
about because people just think it is an adolescent slash
teen white girl problem and then eventually they will grow
out of it. Being an African American woman, I was
often told that this was a white problem and that
that I should just stop because black people don't cut themselves. Yes,

(26:27):
people actually say these things. Also, a lot of people
do not believe men harm themselves, but that's also true.
I kept quiet about my cutting for almost a year
until I can find it in a friend, and it
all went down from there. Soon. It's seeing that all
of my friends were harming themselves in some ways and
we were all on a path toward death. Thankfully, most
of them grew out of it and it found other
ways to cope when they're feeling down. So she also

(26:50):
offers some pointers to help treat people who are cutting.
If someone is concerned, she says, don't ever take or
throw away or hide a person's personal cutting tools, boxes, etcetera.
Doing this seems helpful, but it can break the trust
you have with this person, and it could make the
person who was cutting find something quick and really sharp
to use at the moment, and in their frantic state,

(27:10):
they could not be as careful and then, and it
could end up badly. Also, don't shame them or make
them feel like they're worthless. It will be really hard
at first, and sometimes you might say something you regret,
but just take some deep breast and try to focus
on the main point. Remember that everyone is different. Don't
treat the person as if there were someone you see
on TV or reading a book. Remember that you can't
force anyone to stop harming themselves. They have to want

(27:32):
to stop in order to progress. All that a person
can really do is be supportive and know that you're
thinking about them and you want them to get better.
So thanks to Brief for that insight. And I have
a letter from Kristen about our soda pop calth Hey.
She says, I grew up in Palmer, Alaska, a smaller

(27:55):
city north of Anchorage and Alaska. We have many villages
which we call the Bush, that are not connected to
the rest of Alaska by roads, and are therefore only
acceptable by airplane or floatplane, boat, snow machine, and or
dog sled. In these villages, everything is much much more expensive.
In two thousand and eight, I remember a gallon of
gas hitting twelve dollars. I remember learning that in many

(28:15):
bush villages, babies, children, and young adults are beginning to
experience very serious dental problems because healthy drinks such as
water and milk are very expensive, but unhealthy drinks, mostly soda,
are affordable for women with children. These mothers put soda
in bottles for their babies, and their children grew up
drinking soda as the main or even only, daily drink
that contributes not only to problems you mentioned in the podcast,

(28:37):
including weight gain and diabetes, but also major dental problems.
Imagine the cavities a baby would develop if it drinks
solely sugared soda while teething. I'm not sure how big
of a problem this continues to be in the bush,
but it's an image that has always stuck with me
and I wanted to share. So thank you for that information, Christom,
and thanks to everyone who's written in Mom's Stuff. At

(28:58):
Discovery dot com is where you can send all of
your after school special letters and any other letters on
your mind, and also head over to Facebook let us
know post the YouTube video of your favorite after school special.
There are a lot of them up on YouTube, and
you can also find us on Twitter at mom Stuff
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(29:19):
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(29:39):
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